Exploring the World of the Great Kublai Khan

Landscape, After a Poem by Wang WeiYuan period rulers were generous patrons of the arts, and Chinese scholars and painters were often present in the courts of Yuan kings and nobles. Tang Di, who hailed from China's south, ranked among the era's best artists. This masterful ink painting on a scroll of silk shows the depth and richness of the artistic moment: it's inspired by a couplet from a poem written nearly five hundred years earlier, which reads, "I walk to where the water ends / And sit and watch as clouds arise."

• Treasures from the Forbidden City